*The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

An intriguing, code-breaking adventure introduces young teens to the work at Bletchley Park.

*The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. Viking, 2024. 400 pages.

• Reading Level: Middle grades
• Recommended For: Ages 10 – and up

England, 1940. Lizzie Novis, at 14, is not about to be packed off to America and the safety of her American grandmother. The first chapter finds her dodging her chaperone and escaping a ship to return to London. Lizzie is determined to find out what happened to her mother -or Willa, as Lizze now refers to her,

Killed in a bomb blast, they told us. A falsity I refuse to accept. I no longer refer to her as Mother because she’s not currently here to “mother” me. So it’s easier, and hurts less, to call her by her first name.

Precocious? Probably.

Lizzie sets out to enlist the help of her brother, Jakob. He’s been strangely silent, for some reason. Why won’t he talk about what he does? And where is he working?

Jakob, at 19, is doing top secret work at Bletchley Park. With no one else to take his little sister who has evaded her chaperone, he is forced to take responsibility for her. Before Jakob can quite grasp what has happened, Lizzie is ensconced at Bletchley, staying at the village inn and, having signed the official secrets act, working as a messenger girl at the park. But Lizzie hasn’t given up on finding Willa.

Puzzles and Codes

Armed with a coded book of her mother’s, Lizzie sets to work unraveling the secrets of whatever her mother was doing before she disappeared. Despite Jakob’s distance, Lizzie finds new friends, girls she works with and Colin, the innkeeper’s son. Meanwhile, Jakob is working with other promising young code-breakers to untangle the German’s cipher. But who is the strange man who keeps appearing and asking Jakob questions about his mother? What does he want? And what really happened to Willa? 

Bottom Line: Set against the very real war effort at Bletchley Park, this intriguing, code-breaking adventure told in the alternating viewpoints of Jakob and Lizzie is pitch-perfect historical fiction, introducing young readers to the war work at Bletchley and focusing on the fact that many of the workers were quite young. 

Considerations: None.

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Recommended Reading at Redeemed Reader

• Book Review: Candace Fleming’s The Enigma Girls is great nonfiction for teens wanting to learn more about the girls who worked at Bletchley Park.
• Resource: Heroes of WWII: A Book List for Tweens and Teens
• Book Review: Voices of the Second World War

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